"Ray. Yes."
"Then why don't I just skip the Lhasa part and you take me to meet him here and now?"
The Tibetan girl frowned. "You not go to Lhasa?"
"I need to see Bumba Fun more."
"You could see Bumba Fun in Lhasa, too."
"How can I see him in Lhasa if he's here?"
"Bumba Fun in Lhasa and here also," the girl said.
"Are we talking about the same Bumba Fun?" Remo wanted to know.
"How many Bumba Funs you know?"
"I don't know any. How many are there?"
The girl scrunched up her face. "Fifty, maybe sixty Bumba Funs."
"How do I know where I find the right one?"
"All Bumba Funs are correct." The woman looked at Remo with about as much puzzlement, Remo figured, as he was looking at her. Finally she said, "You go to Lhasa to see Bumba Fun or you see Bumba Fun here?"
"I'll settle for the local Fun," said Remo, getting out of the jeep.
"Come this way," invited the girl.
"Why did everyone clap when I drove up?" Remo asked, just to keep a fascinating conversation going.
"At first they think you Chinese."
"Tibetans applaud the Chinese?"
The girl shook her braided hair. "Beijing insist when Chinese come, we clap to make them feel welcome even though in our hearts we want for ravens to pluck out their eyes."
"Oh."
"We call it the clapping tax."
The girl took him to a tent on the outskirts of the village and swept the entrance flap aside.
"I present to you Bumba Fun," she said.
Remo stepped in. The interior of the tent was thick with a smoky buttery odor he associated with Lobsang Drom. It was dark. There was light coming down from the smoke hole in the center of the tent roof, and it made a bright circle. Around the edge of the circle was shadow mixed with stale yak dung smoke hanging still in the air.
The man seated outside the circle of light looked old. He was big, and reminded Remo of a Mongol, except for the turquoise buttons in his earlobes and the bright red yarn interwoven in his thick hair. He looked up with one brown eye like a tiger's-eye agate. The other eye was a blind milky pearl.
"What your name, chiling?" he asked.
"Around here they call me Gonpo Jigme," Remo told him.
Behind him the Tibetan girl gasped. Bumba Fun opened his good eye to its widest.
"You have come down off Mt. Kailas to liberate Tibet?" said Bumba Fun.
"Actually I'm just here to-"
A commotion penetrated the tent. Engine sounds. Yelling. Remo couldn't understand a word.
"The Chinese come!" the girl cried. "They will see the jeep and punish us all."
"I'll handle this," Remo said, pushing out of the tent. "They want me, not you people."
The girl got in his way, her bronze face pleadingly stubborn.
"No! No! You must hide. They must not find you here."
"You forget, I'm Gonpo Jigme."
She put her hands on his chest. "That what I mean. If you kill them all, there will be reprisals. More Chinese come. You must hide. Please!"
Remo hesitated. "What about the jeep? It's stolen."
"We will explain away jeep. Now, quickly. Hide."
Remo ducked back into the tent. He sat down and waited.
"So," he said, "you're Bumba Fun."
"And you are white," said Bumba Fun.
"Sue me."
Bumba Fun stared at Remo with his unwinking tiger's-eye orb and said, "The god does not ride you."
"What god?"
"Gonpo. Also called Mahakala."
"Never heard of him."
"He is known as the Protector of the Tent. You do not know this?"
One ear attuned to the harsh sound of an arriving mechanized column, Remo shrugged. "News to me."